IR

Welcome to the 44th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2021). SIGIR is the premier scientific conference in the broad area of information retrieval. SIGIR 2021 was originally planned to be held in Montréal, Quebec, but, due to the global pandemic, had to be shifted to a virtual conference.

In addition to the traditional technical program familiar to the SIGIR community, SIGIR 2021 has successfully launched two new tracks: Resource and Perspectives. Across all tracks, SIGIR continues to grow in terms of the number of submissions, as shown in the table below.

Valid submissions came from a total of 6,335 authors from 54 countries. We are thankful to all of these authors for choosing to submit to SIGIR 2021. In response to these high-quality papers, 976 reviewers provided reviews and meta-reviews, resulting in a total of 4,241 reviews and meta reviews. We thank the program committees for their diligence. The accepted papers and proposals are contributions from a total of 2,454 authors from 40 countries.

SIGIR 2021's technical program is highlighted by three invited keynote presentations and the 2021 Salton Award keynote. We thank our invited speakers, Eszter Hargittai (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Hang Li (ByteDance, China), and Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell University, USA), for sharing their scholarship and perspective with the SIGIR community.

Adding to this year's agenda is the colocation of the ICTIR 2021 conference, 9 tutorials, 6 workshops, two days of SIRIP, and newly established SIGIR Academy inductions. This year's conference program also includes presentations for 37 papers from ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Volumes 37 and 38, continuing the tradition of supporting knowledge transfer. We are also continuing with events such as Women in IR and a panel on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

But we are doing more than just a panel discussion on DEI this year. Taking advantage of the online format and to continue making SIGIR a welcoming and inclusive space, we have paid special attention to DEI efforts. This is reflected in several new programs and initiatives. This starts with having considerably low registration fees across the board. Then, providing significant discounts to those iii coming from least developed countries (as defined by the UN), and giving substantially discounted or free registration to those who need it. This is on top of SIGIR's Student Travel Award (which is used to cover full registration costs for those students). We are also pleased to offer funds to cover costs for familycare, so more people can attend the conference sessions without having to worry about taking care of their dependents or paying for their care.